Thread: Charter call centers go to Mexico 1,000 people lose their jo

http://www.bizjournals.com/masshightech ... %5E1338975

St. Louis Business Journal - September 4, 2006

Charter closing six call centers; 1,000 workers to lose jobs
St. Louis Business Journal - September 1, 2006by Patrick L. Thimangu


Charter Communications Inc. is closing six call centers in the United States and outsourcing the work to companies with operations in Canada, Mexico and the Philippines.

The closures -- which affect about 1,000 employees and constitute nearly half of Charter's call centers -- are part of a restructuring effort that the debt-laden company has taken to cut costs.

Anita Lamont, Charter's spokeswoman, said a call center in Bay City, Mich., is scheduled to close by the end of this month. A call center in Newtown, Conn., is scheduled to close in October, while three others, in Birmingham, Ala., Fort Worth, Texas, and Irwindale, Calif., are slated for closure in December. The Kingsport, Tenn., call center will cease operations in the second quarter of 2007. The reorganization also includes switching the St. Louis call center's operations from handling cable television-related work to assisting its telephone customers.

Lamont said Charter's call center in St. Louis has about 450 employees and will likely add more. Following the closures, Charter will retain seven other call centers -- Vancouver, Wash.; Rochester, Minn.; Fond du Lac, Wis.; Walker, Mich.; Worcester, Mass; Greenville, S.C.; and Louisville, Ky. The centers employ about 2,500 people.

Charter, which is the nation's third-largest cable television provider, like other cable carriers, has been diversifying its business to compete with telephone companies. That diversification includes offering voice and data services.

Charter has been consolidating call center operations steadily since 2001, but accelerated the effort when Neil Smit took over as chief executive in August 2003. As part of the effort, the company disclosed in its 2005 annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had entered into partnership agreements with two outsourcing companies.

Lamont said Charter does not disclose the names of its business partners. Donna Jaegers, an analyst at Janco Partners Inc., a Denver-based equities research firm, said one of those companies is probably Denver-based TeleTech Inc., which has operations in the United States and several foreign countries. Jaegers said TeleTech, which she covers, has operations in Canada, Mexico and the Philippines -- three countries in which Lamont confirmed that Charter will outsource some call center operations.

Jaegers said it makes sense for Charter to outsource work to TeleTech because such a move will save the company substantial labor and related costs. The cost to employ a call center employee in the United States runs about $45,000 annually compared with about $20,000 in the Philippines, she said. "Charter can save 30 to 40 percent (in call center costs) by outsourcing overseas."

K.C. Higgins, a spokeswoman at TeleTech, said she could not confirm whether Charter is a client of the company. TeleTech, she said, doesn't disclose its customers without their permission.

The latest call center reorganization at Charter began in April because the company wants to strengthen its customer care network, Lamont said. "We feel that the new structure will connect Charter's Care Centers across the country so that every customer will receive the same positive quality service, regardless of geographic location."

Charter had estimated that about 1,400 employees would be affected when Smit first mentioned the closure of call centers in a quarterly conference call with analysts May 2. The company, though, is saying that the actual number will be "far lower than this number," Lamont said.

Fewer jobs will be lost because many of the call center employees continue to work for Charter in other capacities, Lamont said. In Bay City, Mich., for example, the call center will become a dispatch center, she said.

"And, because of attrition and the fact that these employees have the opportunity to apply for other openings within the organization as openings arise, we won't know how many positions are ultimately affected until it's completed," Lamont said.

She said Charter's payment centers, though, have been reporting an increase in customer complaints about difficulties with outsourced customer care centers. A certain amount of disruption was expected from the changes to outsourcing companies, she said, and the cable company is moving to solve any problems customers might have with third-party centers.

Charter had 36 customer service locations, including 14 regional call centers that served approximately 97 percent of its customers, at the end of last year, according to SEC filings. That compares with more than 300 small customer contact centers the company operated at the end of 2000.

Peter Ryan, an analyst at Datamonitor plc, a London-based business research company, said it shouldn't be a surprise that Charter is outsourcing call center operations, given the availability of large pools of educated workers who accept low wages in many foreign countries.

Ryan, who was speaking from his office in Montreal, Canada, said Datamonitor is projecting there will be 81,500 outsourced call center agents serving telecommunications services in the United States in 2010, down from 101,400 in 2005 and 104,000 in 2003. The decreases, he said, are driven by low wages overseas, easing of international trade barriers and increased automation of customer care services.

"The price a company would pay for an outsource agent in the U.S. is about $26 per hour. In India it's about $15 an hour, and in Argentina it's $11 to $12 per hour," Ryan said. "There is tremendous savings."

For the first half of this year, Charter booked special charges of $10 million, a figure mainly composed of costs associated with the closing of call centers and divisional restructuring. The company posted a loss of $841 million on revenue of $2.7 billion for the six-month period ended June 30. The company's stock closed at $1.36 a share Aug. 30, down 32 percent from its 52-week high of $2 a share on Sept. 20, 2005.


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Speaking as a Charter customer, I didn't think they could get any worse.

"The price a company would pay for an outsource agent in the U.S. is about $26 per hour. In India it's about $15 an hour, and in Argentina it's $11 to $12 per hour," Ryan said. "There is tremendous savings."

And who cares if the customer can't understand a word they say?

Just ask Dell Computer how well outsourcing customer support worked for them.

Soo....then what is the economic plan for the US?

They say they are sending out the hard and dirty jobs American's won't do.

They say they are giving out the low paying unskilled jobs Americans shouldn't have to do to illegal aliens.

They say the US is giving away its industrial sector to replace it with a new booming "service industry".

Well...gee....isn't THAT the call center jobs like Charter Communications?



So what will be left for Americans to do?

HI JUDY!!!!! I have missed you!!!!

Originally Posted by Judy

So what will be left for Americans to do?

There was an interesting segment on Lou Dobbs tonight that showed another little discussed provision of the Senate amnesty bill.

Over the next decade, it's estimated that around 1.25 million technical jobs will need to be filled. Under the Senate amnesty plan, 1.88 million H1B visas will be handed out to fill these jobs.

So, for US citizens, there will be no jobs, or at best jobs at a significantly lower pay scale due to the flooding of the market with foreign applicants.

Meanwhile, President Moron bemoans the fact that US kids just aren't studying science and engineering anymore.

Gee, I wonder why?

Hi VirginiaMama!!

CountFloyd, it's true...and I'm so glad you brought up about the technical jobs...and the Traitors plan to fill those with foreign nationals legally under the Visa Program.

There will be NO jobs left for Americans.

They are in fact planning the creation of the New Ex-American. Unemployed, state welfare dependent burdened with debt and taxes with no freedoms therefore and no voice or ability to act or react.

You may recall...I called that person a Drone.

It's like a Bad Sci-Fi Movie happening before our very eyes faster than we can track the plot.

Stand Up America!!

It's time to take action....NOW!!

Oh CountFloyd...that is GREAT!!

I'm posting this on another forum.

Perfect Photo-Op of the Perfect Traitor.

Outsourcing is all part of the globalization plan. Our Congress could make job outsourcing a cost prohibitive proposition through restrictions and penalties for American companies if they wanted to, but instead the government actually rewards the export of jobs through tax benefits. It's all about free trade and globalization. This mess is quickly placing blue and white collar Americans between a rock and a hard place. The illegals are taking the low-wage jobs and many of the middle class workers are having their jobs either outsourced or they are being replaced by foreign works under a visa program. Corporate America is lobbying Congress as we speak to increase foreign worker visas for skilled workers. Folks, it's a lose, lose, proposition for American workers.

Has anyone priced a GM or Ford product lately? These companies are manufacturing a lot (not all, yet) of there vehicles outside the United States now using cheap labor, but our purchase price doesn't seem to be going down any, does it? The same holds true for Levi Strauss products and others. These companies are making many of their products cheaper elsewhere and shipping them back here for sale, but our consumer price doesn't seem to be decreasing. Corporate America is scaming us big time. Guess what, Congress and our President is in alligence with them too. After all, it is corporate America that keeps their campaign war chest nice and fat!

Originally Posted by MW

Outsourcing is all part of the globalization plan. Our Congress could make job outsourcing a cost prohibitive proposition through restrictions and penalties for American companies if they wanted to, but instead the government actually rewards the export of jobs through tax benefits. It's all about free trade and globalization. This mess is quickly placing blue and white collar Americans between a rock and a hard place. The illegals are taking the low-wage jobs and many of the middle class workers are having their jobs either outsourced or they are being replaced by foreign works under a visa program. Corporate America is lobbying Congress as we speak to increase foreign worker visas for skilled workers. Folks, it's a lose, lose, proposition for American workers.

Has anyone priced a GM or Ford product lately? These companies are manufacturing a lot (not all, yet) of there vehicles outside the United States now using cheap labor, but our purchase price doesn't seem to be going down any, does it? The same holds true for Levi Strauss products and others. These companies are making many of their products cheaper elsewhere and shipping them back here for sale, but our consumer price doesn't seem to be decreasing. Corporate America is scaming us big time. Guess what, Congress and our President is in alligence with them too. After all, it is corporate America that keeps their campaign war chest nice and fat!

You got that right